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Thursday, 16 March 2017

CONFIRMED: KING WILL GET PRIVATE JET

Swaziland is to buy King
Mswati III a private jet plane despite the dire financial plight the kingdom is
currently enduring.

This was confirmed on
Tuesday (14 March 2017) after reports that the King, who is sub-Saharan
Africa’s last absolute monarch and already has one jet, had decided not to have
the second jet because the kingdom could not afford it.

Edgar Hillary, acting
Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, told members of a
Swazi parliamentary committee a jet had been purchased and was currently
undergoing refurbishments.

The Swazi Observer, a newspaper in effect owned by the King, reported
that Hillary told the MPs that the aircraft there. ‘It was still undergoing
refurbishments to conform to standards where it could be seen as being fit for
the King.’

In 2015, the Ministry was
given E296 million (about US$20 million) to buy a 375-seater Airbus
A340-300 built in 2001 from China Airlines in Taiwan. E96 million was used to pay a deposit.

There was some confusion
over the current state of the purchase as last week Lindiwe Dlamini, Minister
for Public Works and Transport, told Parliament the government had dropped
plans to buy the jet. The Observer
reported, ‘She further stated this was done by His Majesty King Mswati III upon
seeing that the country was in a dire economic situation.’

King Mswati rules over a
population of 1.3 million people. Seven in ten live in abject poverty with
incomes less than US$2 a day. The King lives a lavish lifestyle with 13
palaces, a private jet, fleets of top-of-the range Mercedes and BMW cars and at
least one Rolls-Royce.

In April 2016, Members of the Swaziland Parliament
blocked the move to pay the E96 million deposit for the plane. The money had
been allocated in the kingdom’s annual
budget announced in February 2016.

The money was set aside for a jet for the King after
members of the parliament, many of them appointed by the King, urged the Swazi
Government to consider buying the King a plane to replace the DC-9 jet (also
known as an MD-87) which he already has. It had been the subject
of legal disputes in both Canada and the British Virgin
Islands.

Once news of the intended spending was made public
outside of Swaziland the King came in for heavy criticism. Swaziland was in the
grip of a drought crisis and in February the Swazi Government declared
a national emergency and said the kingdom would need
E248 million (US$16 million) before the end of April 2016.

Within
days, the MPs overturned their earlier decision. Unconfirmed
reports circulating on the Internet said that King Mswati had refused to
sign-off Swaziland’s budget unless he got his jet.